Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<Well, that's good, because neither does the history course we're talking about. It just doesn't omit the bad parts, like the critics want it to.>> We don't know that, which is why none of us should even be commenting on it. The article liked to gave no details about the courses themselves. AP courses are eligible for college credit, and any college history course I ever had concentrated on a fairly specific issue or period in time. They assumed everyone came to college with a basic understanding of U.S. history (of course that was the 70's... it may have changed today). So I was envisioning courses something like "The indigenous Americans... a history of genocide in America". Which would be a good and valuable course at the college level. I'm just not sure about High School.
Originally Posted By velo <<Well, that's good, because neither does the history course we're talking about. It just doesn't omit the bad parts, like the critics want it to.>> >>We don't know that, which is why none of us should even be commenting on it.<< As a mom of 2 kids who took AP U.S. History (in California) I can attest that it teaches both the "good" and the "bad." It was a very, very rigorous course (year-long) that was actually more difficult than the semester-long U.S. History course that my other child had to take in college. The bonus is that upon passing the AP exam, both kids were given 6 units of college credit - basically one or two classes that we didn't have to pay for later.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <<Well, that's good, because neither does the history course we're talking about. It just doesn't omit the bad parts, like the critics want it to.>> >>We don't know that, which is why none of us should even be commenting on it.<< I'll chime in with Velo. AFAIK, the AP course is set by The College Board (the people behind the SAT's), and is the same nationwide. So I'd be somewhat familiar with this too, having helped one of my friends' high school kids with AP history this year (I was a history major). Not as familiar as velo with a child taking it, but somewhat. And yeah, it brings up some negatives. But plenty of positives too. Any kid who's smart enough to take this course is smart enough to understand the concept of gray areas and moral ambiguity - and in fact it does them more of a service than the whitewashing the Oklahomans are proposing.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip OK. I'll accept that. I had no knowledge of the AP courses and was just going on my college experience. The courses I took were very targeted, and as you might expect given the times (early 70's) they seemed to concentrate on the negative.
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>As a mom of 2 kids who took AP U.S. History (in California) I can attest that it teaches both the "good" and the "bad." It was a very, very rigorous course (year-long) that was actually more difficult than the semester-long U.S. History course that my other child had to take in college.<< My son also took AP History in high school. It is not the America hating curriculum its detractors claim.
Originally Posted By TheRedhead Here are some things to throw into the mix, and it's based on what I've seen working up close with AP classes in my school: The College Board is a business. Students pay to take an AP test, so it is in the best interest of College Board to get as many kids to take the test as possible. And for many, many years, the AP tests were tests only white kids took. That has much to do with the demographic of college-bound students being mostly white, so it's basically been a class for whites. And you could imagine that, intentionally or not, classes like AP US History or AP Literature become white-focused. But it is a fact that College Board has made MAJOR strides recently in reaching out to minorities to get them into AP classes (and this does include changes to curriculum). And AP classes have become MUCH more diverse than they were, say, ten years ago. There's hard data out there, but I can tell you anecdotally that this has happened at my high school - it's not just a classroom full of white kids anymore. Cynical me says that this is mainly about money, since more kids taking the class = more kids taking the test = more money for College Board. But you have to figure that it's harder to gloss over slavery, genocide, and internment camps in 2015 when those whose ancestors were afflicted by said atrocities are suddenly sitting before you in your classroom. Add to this the fact that the nature of these classes has always stressed strong critical thinking skills. Teenagers ain't dumb, especially the ones ponying up to take AP classes. A teacher would lose all credibility by trying to omit the sad bits from history (something we've already seen when this cockamamie attempt was made years ago and students rose up). Bottom line - we want students to be critical thinkers. This Oklahoma group isn't pushing a pro-America stance; it's pushing lazy thinking. Phooey on them, and phooey on anyone who doesn't call them out on being the dangerous morons they are. And pegging the College Board's motives as solely a part of "the liberal agenda" instead of (at least partly) a lust for profits is awfully naive.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer We need to learn about the negative so we can understand why America is the way it is today. We need to learn how the natives were treated. We need to know that there are black people alive today who didn't have the right to vote when we were sending men into space. We need to understand the history of the immigrant groups, of how groups like the Irish or the Slavs or the Chinese were treated. We need to know that we put an entire nationality in concentration camps while their sons were liberating others from concentration camps in Europe. Yes, we need to acknowledge the good. But if you don't at least understand the bad parts of our history then you don't really understand why Ferguson and police violence against African America youth is such a big deal. You don't understand the depression that still grips Native Americans. We have done some amazing things, but unlike other countries who did them we said that it was self-evident that all men were created equal. When you make that the founding statement of your nation you need to live up to it. We still haven't.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer Let me rephrase part of that post above to be relevant to this board: There are people alive today who didn't have the right to vote when Disneyland was celebrating it's 10th Anniversary merely because of the color of their skin.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Bottom line - we want students to be critical thinkers. This Oklahoma group isn't pushing a pro-America stance; it's pushing lazy thinking.<< Three cheers! That's an important component of this. Forcing kids to confront difficult history is a way to get them to think critically. Critical thinking is a learned skill, it's not something we have an innate talent for or are born with. Oklahoma is more interested in cognitive dissonance than it is educating children.
Originally Posted By ecdc To paraphrase Neil deGrasse Tyson, the great thing about history is it's true whether you believe it or not. There are absolutely different interpretations and the best historians of American history argue about what something might mean or how prevalent something was, etc. But the basic narrative facts are clear. Historians don't spend their time arguing whether George Washington was a President of the United States, or whether John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln. Likewise, they don't argue over whether slavery was the cause of the Civil War (it was), they don't argue whether Andrew Jackson was responsible for Indian removal, they have long rejected the Dunning School interpretation of Reconstruction and instead embrace Eric Foner's. On and on it goes. So you can remove this stuff from the AP history books all you like, but it still happened and it still radically shaped the way America is today.
Originally Posted By oneyepete I spoke with the history trschers at my school about this topic. All at different ages and generations. They said they try to deviate some from the "script", when possible and appropriate, and show/discuss some of the "ugliness" of our history. But they did caution that using the "ugliness" to put down some one only makes yo part of the ugliness. When it can be an open discussion of understanding then it can be beneficial.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Yes, there are always at least two sides to every story. Blacks were first sold into slavery by other Blacks in their home country. Some American Indians initiated brutal attacks on white settlers in response to land being used... even when the settlers posed no threat to the Indians and there was no clear definition of who owned what. As with most all situations, there were no clear cut good guys or bad guy on either side. Given the situation at the time, it is often a mistake to try to judge it by today's standards.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Yes, there are always at least two sides to every story. > Yes indeed. And that's what the AP course attempts to show, and to stimulate critical thinking and discussion. OK wants to go back to one-sided "everything we do is awesome!"-style history.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Blacks were first sold into slavery by other Blacks in their home country.<< Understanding why that happened and racialization is far more important than using that extremely limited knowledge as a rebuttal to using millions of people as chattel slavery to build up a nation and generate immense wealth, which is what the United States did. This has nothing to do with "sides" or "white vs. black." That's like saying some U.S. soldiers committed atrocities during WWII so we're all even stevens on this Holocaust thing, right? It's a teensy bit more complicated than you allow, which is why more in-depth history is so important.
Originally Posted By utahjosh Knowlege is power. Hearing only one story is dangerous. Watch this short but powerful Ted talk from a Nigerian author. Her insight is valuable: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en">http://www.ted.com/talks/chima...guage=en</a>
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Knowledge is power. Hearing only one story is dangerous.<< Which is why Oklahoma's plan is a terrible one. I guess as a historian I'm baffled by comments about "only one story" and "two sides." It's not a competition. Historians write about what happened and try and decipher why it happened. They're well aware of all the sides (and there's always more than two). So, for example, a historian like Eric Foner looks at what Andrew Johnson said and what happened when he was president and determines that Johnson was a scathing racist who sided with the south throughout his presidency and harmed Lincoln's inchoate vision of presidential reconstruction. That's what happened. What, then, is the other side of that story? That Andrew Johnson, in spite of all of his words to the contrary, was a swell guy who loved black Americans? That the south was just a misunderstood, maligned region that was all ready to embrace Reconstruction until radical Republicans in the north ruined them? What's the other side? What's the other side of Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings and his slaves at Monticello and his outlying properties? What...that he wrote the Declaration of Independence so that's what we need to focus on? I'm pretty sure the AP History course covers the Declaration. Or is it less about sides and stories as it is not talking about those things because we think they aren't that big a deal? Or we don't think they're central to what America is? Because I think that's what people really mean and I think that's what this fight is really about in Oklahoma. So far as I can tell, no one is actually disputing the claims of the AP history text. They're disputing its very existence. This fight in Oklahoma is a debate over what America is. If you want to tell me that all American is is George Washington crossing the Delaware and Jefferson writing the Declaration and Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans and Lincoln saving the Union (because, apparently, the south seceded for vague reasons of "states' rights") and Roosevelt charging up Kettle Hill and the New Deal and the defeat of Hitler and all of that, I will tell you sorry, but you are entirely ignorant of what your country is. America is those things and they should be in an AP history book. But what also should be in a history book is that Josh and I live in an area that was seized from Mexico in a war (which Lincoln opposed as a congressman) basically started to steal land and was settled by people who were driven violently from their homes in Missouri and Illinois and who themselves basically stole it from American Indians who had been here for generations. We don't have this land because of Manifest Destiny because Baby Jesus wanted us to have it; we have it because we took it from weaker people. That's what America is too. America is slavery and lynching and the Fugitive Slave Law and Dred Scott and Plessy and Jim Crow and grandfather clauses and poll taxes and redlining. tl;dr - your country is what it is, you don't get to cherry pick only the things you like and say without a hint of irony you're doing it because there's "two sides to every story."
Originally Posted By utahjosh ecdc, you misinterpreted the meaning of "only one story." Watch the great Ted talk to see what I meant.
Originally Posted By utahjosh I don't know the exact content of the AP history tests. And I"m guessing the Oklahoma tests were just fine, and the over-reaction to them is too much. I want the truth to be taught. I don't think that means you can't emphasize the positive more than you emphasize the negative. I don't want to create a generation that thinks that the growth of our country harmed no one. Neither do I want a generation of self-loathing anti-Americans. Balance is needed. And I think that balance should tip a bit toward the positive things we've done as a country as we teach the young citizens of our country.
Originally Posted By ecdc I watched it. It seems to be reinforcing precisely what I'm saying. Start American history with the Natives and not the Mayflower and you have an entirely different story. Make the Indians central to how you tell the story, then how does it change? How, then, does the Oklahoma plan tell multiple stories?
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I don't think that means you can't emphasize the positive more than you emphasize the negative.<< But that's the problem. You are approaching history as if it's a series of disconnected events that we can just kinda talk about and jump from one to the next. It's not something that we can spend 70% of the time on "the positive" and 30% on the negative. The very idea of positive and negative is a subjective notion. Was the Mexican-American War positive or negative? I'll assume you see the Constitution as positive. Was the three-fifths compromise positive? Should it be taught? And if not, how then do we explain forty years of conflict from 1820-60 between north and south in the Congress? AP are college-level courses, or at least they're supposed to be. No one goes into college level history classes with an understanding of "hearing mostly positive." It doesn't work that way. History is what it is; whether you think it's positive or not is irrelevant.
